Category: Hardware

Building an 90° angular power adapter for the C64

Some might know that I’ve been building a piece of furniture on my own to contain all of my retro computers, the “Retroaltar”, about which I might eventually blog in the future. Among these computers are two Commodore 64, a classic breadbox C64 and a C64-II. Unfortunately, when designing the shelves I only accounted for… Continue reading Building an 90° angular power adapter for the C64

Custom ZDDX device description files and flowchart for Philio 4-in-1 PST02-A and Qubino DIN dimmer ZWave devices

If you’re like me experimenting with home automation you’ll certainly have come across Philio’s 4-in-1 Multisensor PST02-A/B/C devices. They unite multiple functions:

Flashing a Huawei E3372h 4G LTE stick from Hilink to Stick mode

The Huawei E3372 is quite a popular LTE stick: it’s widely available (in retail stores, on eBay and also in branded variations, eg. “Telekom Speedstick V”, “Megafon M150-2”) and rather affordable (currently starting at €60 in Germany). It features a LTE Cat 4 modem supporting up to 150 MBit/s download and up to 50 MBit/s… Continue reading Flashing a Huawei E3372h 4G LTE stick from Hilink to Stick mode

Using your Raspberry Pi Zero’s USB wifi adapter as both Wifi client and access point

The Raspberry Pi Zero captivates with its small dimensions. This comes at a cost, however, with only one micro USB port available for peripherals of any kind. In this scenario you’ll probably think twice about what you connect to that port. “A USB hub” may sound like a natural choice but if you’re like me,… Continue reading Using your Raspberry Pi Zero’s USB wifi adapter as both Wifi client and access point

Market overview of USB Wifi adapters based on Atheros chipsets

When looking for Wifi adapters, there are reasons why you would not just go ahead and buy whatever your favorite $DEALER has in stock. If you have some experience with Wifi adapters and drivers, especially under Linux, you’ll know that in general Atheros chips are what you want. They have a long tradition of both… Continue reading Market overview of USB Wifi adapters based on Atheros chipsets

Complete rotation support for the Adafruit PiTFT 2.8″ capacitive touchscreen display

In my previous post, I introduced the PiTFT 2.8″ capacitive touchscreen display and showed some test code. If you played around with that, you might have noticed that with the default /boot/config.txt setting of rotate=90 the display is a landscape mode.

Getting started with the Raspberry Pi 2 and a Adafruit PiTFT 2.8″ capacitive touchscreen display

“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities” (Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”) Like many others, I bought another Raspberry Pi 2 to play around with, together with an Adafruit 2.8″ PiTFT capacitive touchscreen (note that Adafruit has various variants of displays that differ only in details such as… Continue reading Getting started with the Raspberry Pi 2 and a Adafruit PiTFT 2.8″ capacitive touchscreen display